I wrote this book for two reasons. First, I hope to wake British readers from their amnesia about our country's history, once so saturated with opium. Second, I also want to describe some of the many complexities of this war. Many of the original English sources I used were written by British soldiers who took part in the war during the Victorian era. They described it purely as a military campaign. But war is never that simple: it is full of suffering, opportunism, mistakes, lies, and clamor. Studying the Opium War can teach us many things: about the histories of China and Britain; about personal suffering and cultural conflict; about the functions and dysfunctions of governments and societies; and about the compromises, poor decisions, deception, and tragic outcomes that people resort to in desperate circumstances.
